Broadband News

Ofcom under estimates price of BT Broadband

The annual Communication Market Report from Ofcom provides a useful but very
long fact sheet and because it has the weight of Ofcom behind it, it is usually
taken as gospel for any figures it holds. We were surprised to see BT as the
cheapest fixed line provider on page 315 of the report.

The BT price looks wrong as the voice line rental was £16.99 per month
leaving £4.50 per month for the broadband, and as the foot notes tell us all
promotional discounts are excluded. The cheapest BT service in June 2015 was
the 10GB ADSL2+ service which outside of any 12 month minimum term promotions
is £13 per month, and as offer prices have changed since June 2015 it is on
offer for £5 per month (unlimited ADSL2+ from BT has a standard price of
£18/month). The same issue arises for Infinity where the 20GB or 40GB has had
offers of £7.50 to £10 per month when its standard price is £18 per month. This
is also an unfair comparison for EE, who have a £2.95 unlimited broadband for
12 month minimum term and then £9.95 per month, where as the Ofcom table is
using the standard price. Sky since June 2015 has increased its standard price
from £7.50 to £10 per month.

The other products in the comparison are all unlimited services, so we feel
it would have been better to compare like for like in terms of usage allowance
too. Or at the very least compare packages that will handle the average data
use of homes (which in June 2014 was 58GB, up from 30GB in June 2013).

Unlike BT ADSL BB EE cheap BB is only cheaply if their network is available via your exchange.

With a market A/1 20CN exchange you will find the cost for EE BB becomes £24.95 a month with a 20GB monthly usage.

21again

over 3 years ago

@21again and the same with PlusNet, but then you get into the complication that Sky and TalkTalk might not be available at those exchanges either.

The 95% availability of TalkTalk was featured, and is a stat we've covered a lot before.

andrew

over 3 years ago

Also there is no such thing as an EE landline network. The price discrimination between area on EE is based on where Orange had LLU. Which became history long ago.

uniquename

over 3 years ago

Will be interesting to see the average data usage for August with the rollout of Windows 10. Even using an ISO install disc, each device I updated still downloaded 6.5 GB of data. updated 6 devices plus 2x 3GB downloads for 32bit & 64 bit ISO - that comes to about 44GB & I still have 2 more to do.